Simple accounting in a digital agency

This is the way to keep the books straight.

To bill your customers, create invoices based on project tracked time (read about it here) in Harvest (and sync it with Xero, using “copy to Xero” feature).

Then write down all your bills like salaries and service fees to Xero too.

It’s also important to setup your accounts (like bank accounts, credit/debit cards, cash, e-money) and to sync them automatically or manually to always keep them up to date (reconcile). You can write your script if Xero doesn’t provide an option for your bank.

If you do it right, you always know your financial status from Xero dashboard and can forecast your financial future (create simple Google Spreadsheet once every few month and play with it).

If you can’t use Xero for taxes, you have to deal with other tools to reflect necessary information. We used MoeDelo in Russia and outsourced our Estonian taxes by sharing Google Drive folders with our incoming and outgoing invoices with our Estonian accountant.

Confirm and send all payments on weekly on the same day (contractors, small payments that can’t wait) or monthly (salaries, taxes, office, etc). This alone will save you a ton of time.

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